Sunday, September 30, 2012

When it comes to animated comic-book based adaptations, no one does them better than DC. While Marvel's animated features aren't bad in the least, they just more often than not come off as being rarely anything better than average. The DC Universe animated features boast better animation and voice acting, and have managed to successfully adapt some epic and beloved DC stories into 75-minute animated dirges. True, some haven't been anything special ("Green Lantern: Emerald Knights" and "Batman: Gotham Knight") and some have been quite spectacular ("Batman: Under the Red Hood" and "Wonder Woman"). Though DC has informally announced that a majority of the future DC animated films will focus on the Justice League, Superman, or Batman since anything not involving any of them doesn't sell through the roof, this comic geek has come up with a wishlist for DC stories I would fucking love to see in animated form. Granted I know that a majority of these won't ever happen, but that doesn't mean that a geek can't dream. I'm not going to go into too much depth for each one here, because I could talk about this shit for hours. So here we go with my top DC Universe animated flicks wishlist:

TEEN TITANS: THE JUDAS CONTRACT

Originally slated to be a DC animated flick, "The Judas Contract" got nixed due to the fact that the mega-popular cartoon was still resonating in the minds of children everywhere, and because the shockingly mature content of this storyarc would probably not have been done justice in animated form. Still, seeing "The Judas Contract" animated would be awesome.

KINGDOM COME

The mega-popular and beloved dystopian look at the DC universe would be smashing to see in animated form. Just imagine Alex Ross' lush paintwork applied to animation, and you've got something with the potential to be beautiful unleashed on your eyeballs. Just like "The Judas Contract", this has a shocking amount of mature content, but considering what all the recent DC animated flicks have gotten away with in terms of content and violence, this would be a no-brainer.

THE FLASH: THE RETURN OF BARRY ALLEN

The Flash doesn't get enough love, which is a damn shame because the characters, mythos, and villains associated with Flash are some of the best the DC Universe has to offer. How awesome would it be to see an animated adaptation of young Flash Wally West get bested by the former Flash Barry Allen after he (allegedly) returns from the dead? There's little chance of this ever happening, since DC rebooted their comic universe and Wally practically doesn't exist anymore, but this would be awesome to see in animated form.

THE SINESTRO CORPS WAR

One of the greatest and most action packed storylines in Green Lantern history would be amazing to see in animated form. Not to mention the fact that since it involves every single superhero in the DC universe taking on Sinestro's army, it could be marketed as a Justice League movie instead of a stand-alone Green Lantern flick. Just imagine that final slugfest between Hal Jordan and Sinestro in animated form...holy shit. Plus, it could somehow lead into what I propose next...

BLACKEST NIGHT

Dead superheroes and villains returning from the grave and eating the hearts of the living? Yeah, we'll probably never ever see this one in animated form, but man oh man, the possibilities about "Blackest Night" animated are endless.

BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN

After "Batman: Year One", why not adapt "The Long Halloween"? A spiritual sequel, "The Long Halloween" would detail the origin of Two-Face and feature a handful of the best Batman villains thrown in for good measure. Plus, somehow adapting Tim Sale's beautfiul artwork into animated form? Sign me up.

SUPERMAN: LAST SON

Richard Donner, who directed the landmark, classic, original "Superman" film, co-wrote this comic storyarc (that also paid tribute to Christopher Reeve) in which Superman adopts a young Kryptonian boy that mysteriously appears on Earth. The storyarc was surprisingly touhing and heartbreaking, and a great way to introduce/re-introduce everyone to General Zod. This one would be a mistake not to adapt.

Okay folks, my nerd rage has subsided for now. If you have no idea what the hell I've been talking about, or are thinking "why the fuck is this guy watching cartoons", please feel free to blow me.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

At midnight last night, the NHL once again locked out their players, and it appears that hockey fans are ready to have another long work stoppage ahead of them. If you're leeping score at home, this is the third lockout in 18 years under the reign of commissionor Gary Bettman. The 1994-95 season was cut in half, while the 2004-05 season was wiped out completely, but there are some major differences between the last lockout and this one. For starters, the last lockout HAD to happen in order to fix the sport and the league for the better. A hard salary cap was implemented, in an effort to make small market teams competitive in a league that unneccessarily 30 teams. Now here we are in 2012, and having another lockout happen for few more reasons than the owners biting themselves in the ass.

With the implementation of a salary cap on the league, owners and GM's were limited on how much they could throw at players in order to build a contender, so something was created in order to lower a player's cap hit while getting away with paying them a shit load of money in the first few years of the deal: the super long 10-15 year contract that pretty much circumvents the cap. We saw a few deals like that this past summer with the dual deals Minnesota handed Zach Parise and Ryan Suter, as well as the offer sheet thrown at Shea Weber by Philadelphia, which Nashville surprisingly matched. Add to that the list of players that have ridiculously long contracts that are only structured as such to reduce their respective cap hits (Rick DiPietro, Ilya Kovalchuk, Alex Ovechkin, Tyler Myers, Christian Ehroff, Marian Hossa, Brad Richards, Roberto Luongo, Niklas Backstrom, Jeff Carter, Mike Richards, and more) and what we really have here are GM's and owners that need to be saved from themselves. They got themselves into this mess, and now they want to reduce the player's shared revenue because they fucked up and just want to cover their own asses.

There's a little more to the proceedings than all the GM/owner bullshit I mentioned above, as a good chunk of it boils down to Bettman not wanting to come close to anything related to a compromise with the NHLPA. With the League's yearly revenue at a record 3.3 billion, the NHL has never prospered so much as a whole ever before. Granted there are plenty of teams that are still (and always have) suffering from a lack of a fanbase (Phoenix, Columbus) but the NHL should count their blessings that fans came back in droves after the 04-05 lockout with arms wide open. If this lockout lasts a full season, don't expect the fans to come back like they did before, and I for one wouldn't blame them. In fact, if this lockout kills the whole season, I think I may even take a break from my beloved NHL watching. Though honestly I don't think it will last the whole season, mostly because there's so much more to lose this time around (The Winter Classic, HBO's 24/7) it's still fucking unbelievable that we're going through this bullshit AGAIN...but here we are.

Somebody needs to lock Bettman and NHLPA head Don Fehr in a room together and let them come to a fucking agreement. The fact that we're here again is not only mind-numbing, but fucking revolting. Play some goddamned hockey!

Saturday, September 15, 2012

A while back I did a few countdown lists for my Top 10 Underrated Video Game Gems across the five video game systems that have meant the most to me throughout my life. In retrospect I'm now going to list my Top 10 favorite games for each of those five consoles. I'm not going into too much depth here like I did the last time around, instead I'll just be giving a basic rundown of my top 10 favorites. Some purists among you may argue over the games I picked over others, but these are my favorite games I played on these awesome consoles, so if you don't like it, kiss my Irish ass.